What My Little Town Taught Me About Building a Civilization Fit for the Future
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It’s amazing, in its own dire way. Open a newspaper, Twitter, check your Facebook, and so forth. What do you see? Dystopia — a tidal wave of it. A few years ago, you might have thought: this is just a phase. It’ll pass. But it’s not. If anything, it’s getting worse, and it feels like it’s here to stay. All of which begs the question: just why is the 21st century so dystopian?
When I say “it”, or “dystopia,” you might wonder exactly, precisely what I mean. What I mean is very simple though. How many crises do we face? More than I can easily count. Let’s try to list them all, though we’ll run out of sanity and room before we finish, for sure. Finances? Total crisis, incomes falling around the world, debt levels soaring. Infrastructure? Mega-crisis, unless you think the infrastructure we have survives this century, let alone this decade. Social systems? Everywhere from France to Britain to America — crisis. People’s…minds? Crisis, especially in young people, depression and anxiety and suicide rates soaring. Then there are the big ones: climate change and mass extinction, not to mention politics , which has taken a notably…fascist…turn, again.
All of this is what scholars have begun to call the age of “polycrisis.” And in it, the better question isn’t: “what’s in crisis?” It’s: what isn’t? Like I said, the list above is a mere brief beginning. Migration and refugees? Another one. Peace and democracy? Yup, in crisis. How about upward mobility? Check. Faith and confidence in institutions? Super crisis. Take a look at any element of society or the world, and chances are, it’s in crisis. How about inequality? Shocking levels of crisis.
This is why the 21st century feels so dystopian. It’s not really a “feeling,” though that’s the way it’s often made out to be by media. It’s an empirical reality. Scholars have begun to conceptualize the 21st century as a “polycrisis” for a reason, which is that the dystopia is real. So when media, bigwigs, wannabe intellectuals and so forth, make all this out to be exaggeration, hyperbole, imply that you are the fainting Victorian bride in the room, because, hey, Tucker!! Everything’s Great!!…they’re completely wrong. And that needs to be said. It’s a form of denialism at this point, because…
The next part is about cause and effect. We need, as a civilization and a world, to figure out what’s causing all this, so we can begin to undo it. But if all we do is deny it…then, my friends, our gooses are well and cooked. It’s fascism on a dying planet, in different bitter and poisonous flavors, maybe.
We just got back to the States, after some time away. Back to the little town where I grew up. And in this town? Everything’s great. It really is. It’s fantastic. People know each other. They smile and say hello. The buses run through the little Main Street, which is full of quaint little shops and cafes and restaurants. There’s even a bookstore or two. Meanwhile, sure, there’s been development. New office buildings are going up, there’s even a new medical complex. When I was growing up here? I couldn’t wait to get out of this…boring…calm…peaceful…place. Now that I’m…all grown up? I’ve come to adore and appreciate just those qualities in it.
And it’s changed, in some ways, too. When I was a kid? You’d never see what you do today — gay couples walking down the street holding hands. “Interracial” ones, probably. This is the South, folks. I’m a card-carrying Southerner. I wear cowboy boots and jeans most days to this day, as funny as it might sound. My little town did that. And it’s changed, in so many ways, for the better. One of the last times we were back? Little schoolgirls were furiously protesting the Supreme Court. Wouldn’t have happened when I was a kid — but there they were happily defiant, just outside the little Mayor’s office.
Not so far away, though, is another town. Not really a town — more of a place. Further out from the city. It’s an exurb, really. No real core, Main Street, town squares. When I was growing up, this place? It was just…fields. Miles and miles of them. Southern countryside. The developers moved in, and built acres and acres of McMansions, Walmarts, strip malls, exurban apartment “villages” and so forth. This place? It’s the precise opposite of my little town. In every way imaginable.
This other locale is maybe 30 miles from my little town. A mere footstep in American terms. But they couldn’t be more different.
The other place? It’s become famous for…school board meetings…where soccer moms…shout threats…at teachers and principals. Where die-hard supporters of a governor who’s set up tip lines to report on teachers — and kids — congregate. Where “wokeness” is the focus of a histrionic moral panic, as if that’s the Big Crisis of the 21st Century, LOL, not temperatures racing through the roof. Where culture wars rage, instead of sanity prevailing. Take this trip of a few dozens of miles — and you’ll be in a different world. A much, much more unpleasant one. You emphatically won’t see gay couples walking the street hand-in-hand there, and you won’t see girls protesting the Supreme Court, either. This other place? It exemplifies all the cliches of American collapse, from fanaticism to lunacy to bigotry to violence.
Perhaps by now you’ve figured out why I brought all this up. These two places exemplify the story of polycrisis, of the 21st century. One is doing pretty OK — my little town. The other? It’s in all the crises. So what makes the difference between them?
Perhaps it’s just age. At first, I ruled this out — but now? I’m not so sure. You see, my little town is older than the US of A — it was founded back in the 1600s. The other place is brand new. What that means, though, is that my town is a lot more secure — plenty of homes are passed down through the generations, people have lived for here for several generations, like, now, my folks and their kids. But the other place is insecure. It’s full of McMansions, bought on debt, by people who’ve overstretched themselves, and so turnover of housing is incredibly, consistently high. There’s a truth at work here, though it’s not really about age — it’s about security, in the sense of life itself. In my town? We don’t feel at risk, from much of anything, and certainly, not, LOL, couples peacefully walking down the street, books, words, ideas — but the other place does.
As a result of all this, these two places grew in very, very different ways. The other place? Didn’t invest in anything. When I say anything, I mean it. They built a few schools, a toll road of a highway, and that’s about it. But my town invested in all kinds of public goods. For America, it’s remarkable — it’s one of the few places that has them. Public transport? Check. Squares and Main Streets, not bombed out? Check. Even a hospital which is more or less open to all? Check.
Now. Why was my town able to invest — and the other place, no? Well, for a set of reasons which are interlinked. One was security — more people owning their homes, passing them down through generations, meant that we could have…wait for it…shudder…higher taxes. If you want to move into my town — and many have — there’s a price: you have to pay higher taxes than the other place. In the other place, you don’t have to pay much at all. The flipside, though, is that we have working systems in my town. The other place has…culture wars…anger…enmity…division…bigotry…rage.
That, too, creates a kind of self-selection effect. Imagine that you’re a young family, and you’re looking for a place to live. Not rich, not poor, just average. Maybe, even though it’s more costly, you choose my town. If you do, you’re going to be the kind of person who’s OK with paying a little bit more, so you can have all these nice things — public transport, good hospitals, excellent schools, smooth roads, town squares, a working Main Street.
But if you’re another kind of person, you’ll object on ideological grounds — hey, I’m not going to pay an extra 10%! I’m going to have a McMansion all my own, and I don’t care if there’s nothing else around for fifty square miles but a Walmart! Perhaps you see my point. Our locales have diverged in the kinds of people they attract: my town attracts all those hated liberals, though in European and Canadian terms they’re still super conservative, while the other place attracts the kinds of folks who’ll blame it on wokeness when they lose the McMansion they couldn’t really afford in the first place. People who don’t value any of the following things: community, public goods, public spaces, coexistence, investment — who are just in it, really, for themselves.
Perhaps you’ve figured out, too, by now, what I’m doing here. I’m tracing links of polycrisis. You see, what’s troubling and challenging about this age isn’t just this Viking level smorgasbord of crises — it’s how they interact. Only if we begin to figure out how they interact do we really have some hope of undoing them.
My town isn’t perfect. Far from it. But it feels — and this is weird, for America — much more like Canada or Europe than almost anywhere else I’ve been in the States. Think about all those functioning systems and institutions. Hell, I can even get a decent espresso and a croissant — there’s that aging European flaneur in me. It’s not that my town is going to magically, like a fairy-tale, triumph over climate change and fascism and mass extinction. But it has a chance. Because like I said, it’s ready to invest. It builds systems and institutions. It values community and coexistence. It doesn’t get wrapped up in the stupidity of self-destructive “culture wars” — while it’s water and energy grids begin to fail. Nope. We’re a pragmatic, tolerant, kind, and forward looking bunch.
The other place, though? The weather’s worsening around here. Tornadoes — never used to hit — are becoming seasonal events. The power goes down when mega-storms strike. The water system’s running on empty. And as the economy struggles, of course, layoffs and churn become more commonplace — hence, all those McMansions always on the market.
This place isn’t poised to make it. Because it won’t invest, it’s systems aren’t looking good — but climate change, of course, is only getting worse. Meanwhile, would you want to send your kid to a school where soccer moms shout death threats at teachers…where books are banned…would you want to live in a place where gay people are demonized and trans people can’t exist? Sure, there are some people who want that. But by and large? They’re not capable of forming a community capable of surviving much of anything, because, LOL, if the only thing you’re willing to invest in is hate and bigotry, well, good luck to you having water to drinks and energy when you hit that light switch as this century rolls on.
Maybe you see some of the links I’m trying to trace. They’re subtle, complex ones. One set goes like this: a lack of financial security leads to a deficit of investment, which makes societies, towns, countries, etcetera, that much more vulnerable to crisis. Another one goes like this: getting wrapped up in divisive “culture wars” issues instead of paying attention to real problems — and no, the existence of trans or gay people is emphatically not a problem — leaves countries, towns, whatever, less capable of investment, building, protection. Another one still goes like this: investment levels are driven by how much people value community, and people self-select along those lines. Those who don’t value community will move into basically tax haven style areas — but those areas are also not going to have much of anything outside compounds and McMansions, and good luck surviving the next century, let alone decade, in those, because all the basics are only getting more costly. You begin to see, perhaps, how complex interactions in polycrisis style thinking really are.
Of these two places, my little town, and the exurb, which one is the world more like? Well, the troubling fact is that it’s much more like the exurb. Our civilization is heading down that avenue — not the one my little town took. Our investment rate is shockingly low, and we have no functioning systems at a civilizational scale. That is because we are unable to cooperate. Even on an issue as big as climate change, we are making little to no progress, hence, the dire “final warning” the UN just issued. Cooperation is dwindling because the world is wrapped up in divisive “culture wars” — and I put that in quotes because a better name for them is simply scapegoating. In America, the circle of scapegoats has extended outwards from new immigrants to include gay people and trans kids and women; in Britain, it’s Europeans and penniless refugees; in Europe, the far right is ascending; in India, the scapegoat is Muslims and Buddhists — on and on it goes. Hatred is rising, and making it impossible for us to cooperate at a civilizational scale, and so we aren’t raising our levels of investment, and building the systems and institutions so obviously necessary to survive the next century, whether political ones, social contracts, or economies that don’t kill the planet.
Our world this century is a polycrisis. And we don’t fully grasp why. Why are some people so vulnerable to the fools’ seduction of hatred? Is it just education? Is it poverty? Both? Why are some people against community, and only in it for themselves, in a kind of fanatical, let-the-devil-take-the-hindmost sort of way? Why are “culture wars” — by which we should better way bigotry, scapegoating, prejudice, violence — so easy to ignite, when the world’s focus should be on its real problems? Why is it that we’re making little to no progress on reinventing our economies — and less than none on renewing our social contracts?
This is what dystopia is, my friends. When everything’s a crisis. But not just any kind. A self-inflicted one. Crises manufactured, more often than not, for the sake of power, money, greed, old hierarchies, possession, dominance. When the average person is suckered into this nonsense because, well, perhaps they’ve never experienced community and cooperation at all, not much, and so all they’ve known is the short end of the stick, and now, well, they want someone else to feel that way. We don’t fully understand the linkages yet. Not in the way, that, say, we came to understand the last war, and its aftermath, thanks to Keynes magisterial work — on which we rebuilt the world. That is the scale of the task before. Understanding, and rebuilding. Before or after things fall apart, though — that part is still up to us.
Umair March 2023
